Is Matter Conscious? No it isn’t, but …

[Posting a draft from 2017]

As a rule of thumb, any headline phrased like that kinda question was almost certainly created by an editor as click-bait and invariably demands the obvious answer “No”. So despite being Tweeted by @AnitaLeirfall – generally a reliable source 😉 – I didn’t actually read it beyond a skim of the opening paragraphs – another noddy introduction to the “hard problem” – yawn, right? Anything that looks like click-bait is a turn-off, right?

So much for my rules of thumb. Spinoza is a trigger for me. Always had a soft spot for him since a survey of my philosophical position showed me to be largely Spinozan (even though I was ignorant of his work at that time, 15 years ago) and found myself subscribing to the view that “Spinoza is the most lovable of philosophers” since I subsequently read Rebecca Goldstein on Spinoza. There is very little new under the sun I find, so coincidentally, whilst the article – in Nautilus magazine by Hedda Hassel Mørch – mentions mainly Leibniz and Russell but not Spinoza among earlier thinkers, Russell was of course the source of that lovable Spinoza quote.

The bottom line is it’s a long read which does start with some essential introductory material but which works its way to the concluding suggestion that, whilst matter is not conscious per se, matter comprises the same proto-conscious stuff as consciousness itself. Pretty much the panpsychism of Spinoza – pantheistic in Spinozan terms, but he was for all practical purposes an atheist blasphemer.

Read it, all of it, I’m not going to summarise the whole thesis here, just reinforce it with some of my own recent conclusions. The clue is in the title, the whole title, including the subtitle, not just the click-bait headline:

Is Matter Conscious?
Why the central problem in neuroscience is mirrored in physics.

Spinoza was of course dealing with how life itself and Descartes’ res cogitans could be reconciled with res extensa – the duality whose vestiges stubbornly remain in the hard problem of consciousness to this day. In those days the matter of res extensa had no equivalent hard problem; atoms were still presumed indivisible as Democritus intended, and apart from sharing the properties of material objects, they didn’t even have mass until posited by Newton. Materially, these were simpler times. As Mørch has subsequently indicated, Spinoza’s contribution though recognised as immense, was not relevant to parallel hard-problem(s) of duality **** parallels in wave-particle duality, quantum weirdness and even later speculative components underlying even the quarks, photons and all the other particles of the present day standard model of physics. Strings, Quantum-Loops, you name it.

The parallels between subjective-objective duality in the hard-problem of consciousness and the dualities between waves and particles, between quantum-mechanics and general-relativity of fundamental physics have been apparent, at least metaphorically, since Copenhagen and Schrödinger. But increasingly since then, more physicists, wrestling with unifying those decidedly weird and non-intuitive divisions, have been prepared to countenance that the metaphorical parallels may in fact be mirrored more explicitly in the physics itself. Mørch’s article describes that mirroring as potentially total – that both dualities are dissolved if physics stuff is actually comprised of the same psychic stuff. Not necessarily that the material particles of physics are conscious per se, but that they are made of the same proto-consciousness as consciousness itself.

I subscribe to a “point-particle” view of the universe, all of it. Everything is derived from (comprises / is caused by / is supervenient upon) – the relations – significant differences – between these otherwise property-less points of possibility in space-time. In this view – information both as bits and as dynamic patterns thereof. Significantly and coincidentally, until Newton added tangible mass Leibniz had held Democritus atoms to be such point-particles. Between Newton and Einstein (and Bohr and all the other quantum and relativity physicists) there had been Boscovich, Maxwell and Mach attempts at explaining physical material properties and forces in terms of simple (atomic) point-particles

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Post Notes: See the comment thread and my last comment.

In small connected world mode – following-up Hedda Hassel Mørch connections (the author of the piece above), I find the IIT / Tononi connection AND I found Margaret Wertheim, author of “Pythagoras’ Trousers” (1995). Fascinating book in it’s own right – majoring on the mythologizing of Galileo and Pythagoras (a la Koestler and Dreger) leading modern science astray, BUT ALSO the only source I’ve seen other than L L Whyte to recognise the Boscovich model. Those points of “all possible being” to use the Heideggerian metaphor – “all conceivable possibility” to use Marletto & Deutsch. This is an important vein of research.

And the Pigliucci <> Goff dialogue has concluded. And Jerry Coyne has dived into irrationally defending orthodox science rationality against pan-psychic suggestions. Science orthodoxy as religious dogma is a major component of the Wertheim thesis above.

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4 thoughts on “Is Matter Conscious? No it isn’t, but …”

When the author says, “For there to be a relation, there must be two things being related,” the heart of the problem is presented. There are not “things” being related; rather, the relations (relations of Concern, according to Whitehead) interact to define “things.” ( I think here the author is exploring a position that is later amended in the same way.)

Are the relations themselves “things”, as in point-particles? Well, Is information itself “things”, each datum a “thing” in the material sense of a point-particle? Or does information define the “things” it reflects?

The article says at one point, “Some have argued that there is nothing more to particles than their relations, but intuition rebels at this claim. For there to be a relation, there must be two things being related.” I think this is an objection the author is trying to answer.

This goes to the heart of the question. There are not necessarily two point-particle “things,” which exist independently and come into a relationship. After all, what would it mean for a thing to “exist independently” without reference to any relationships, and then somehow come into a relationship?

Instead the proposal is that a relationship forms between two concerns relative to one another, and out of this relationship emerges what may at times appear to be point-particles. This approach has the advantage that the concerns are not necessarily reified as single point-particles, limited by special relativity. A concern could evolve into multiple relationships or interactions with other concerns, explaining quantum entanglement — that is, the relationship of “point-particles” in ways not limited by the space and time to which their reification would otherwise commit us.

The article says at one point, “Some have argued that there is nothing more to particles than their relations, but intuition rebels at this claim. For there to be a relation, there must be two things being related.” I think this is an objection the author is trying to answer.

This goes to the heart of the question. There are not necessarily two point-particle “things,” which exist independently and come into a relationship. After all, what would it mean for a thing to “exist independently” without reference to any relationships, and then somehow come into a relationship?

Instead the proposal is that a relationship forms between two concerns relative to one another, and out of this relationship emerges what may at times appear to be point-particles. This approach has the advantage that the concerns are not necessarily reified as single point-particles. A concern could evolve into multiple relationships or interactions with other concerns, explaining quantum entanglement — that is, the relationship of “point-particles” in ways not limited by the space and time to which their reification would otherwise commit us.

Certainly my own model – in the limit – the infinitesimal point “particles” have no intrinsic properties other than their relations to neighbouring points (aka bits of information). For me this goes back to Boscovich in 1700’s (Before Whitehead, before Deutsch & Marletto, before Smolin, before Tononi.) Points of conceivable possibility rather than any kind of “particle”. Space, time and the “laws” of physics (and particles and consciousness, etc) emerge from “patterns” of such possibilities.

Of course, I see now, (it was an old draft) my position outlined above was in the post, and the article itself stood on its own. I had intended to do a much more thorough review of it, for publication beyond the blog – it seemed (seems) much more important than my holding post. I’d forgotten how good it was until I stumbled back across it a couple of days ago searching for some old references.

And searching the author Hedda Hassel Mørch I see she’s Norwegian, like Anita Leirfal – *AND* already refers to Tononi and IIT (She seems to be involved in the latter in fact). Quite a lot of activity in her name in 2020 I see. *AND* she presented at the 2018 Science of Consciousness event in Tucson – what a small world! https://t.co/bYTSeXzdxh (Oh, how unfortunate for her, having been introduced by Chalmers, her panel discussion is shared with Deepak Chopra and Stuart Hameroff – jeez!) This Guardian / CHE review of the 2018 conference gets the whackiness about right – and fails to notice Mørch https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jun/19/out-of-their-minds-wild-ideas-at-the-coachella-of-consciousness